3 Ideas for Dark Sky Garden Lighting

Low light at night reveals a new beauty.

Dark skies are about more than adhering to planning rules.

The feeling of enjoying the dark is a precious one few of us get, and I can show you how.

We humans feel deeply in the dark. Our senses come alive, and we’re forced to be alert to more than we need to be in the causal comfort of a daylight stroll. 

I praise the dappling of light and shadow plate dout with careful lighting placement, on the surfaces that give lustre and pattern rather than harsh reflection. I like to hint at the path we must take through a garden. Accessibility always, but art and light as sculpture as well. 

There is a perfect juncture of using light artfully for our human selves and to support wildlife, including bats. 
We are all becoming more aware of our responsibilities to and opportunities to enrich wildlife, by using light with discernment.

Darkness is enriching, but you and I are often faced with contemporary images that encourage us to illuminate the darkest corners of our gardens and properties like it’s the 5th of November every night. 

So here I want to encourage you to consider lighting lightly.

We know we’re on thin ice with this climate crisis and species decline, but this education piece leans not so heavily on the measured science, but more to the feeling and deep connection to our human selves that darkness brings. 

I am your guide with expert knowledge, steering you to what’s best for ourselves, your garden and the planet. 

The three reads on my desk now are Dani Robertson’s book All Through The Night, Junichiō Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows and Jacqueline Yallop’s Into the Darkness. 

Each speaks to darkness in different ways, but each provides a way in to encouraging clients to commission dark sky lighting, as seen in Hudson Lighting’s dark sky lighting range. 

These are three ways to use Hudson’s dark sky lighting selections in your garden. 

The dark skies way 

In 2024 Gower became our newest dark sky mandated area, and ask anyone who knows it and it’s a majestic place. Now even more so, as especially on a new moon, you will be rewarded with a surfeit of stars. 

The effort to gain the designation began in 2017, and included community involvement from the Gower Society. 

Look what you can see without light pollution.

Swansea Council has now retrofitted all 1,641 streetlights in Gower with dark sky-compliant LED lanterns, and the area has hosted hundred of dark skies events. 

This is the angle of Dani Robertson in her book All Through The Night. Switch them off, she cries, we all deserve the stars. She is passionate about dark skies and low lighting. Her argument works for these circumstances, where are safe within gardens or areas of natural beauty. 

“Through dedication and collaboration, the dark sky advocates supporting Gower National Landscape have achieved a significant milestone—securing its place as an International Dark Sky Community. This achievement safeguards not only the breathtaking beauty of Gower’s starlit skies but also the rich biodiversity and cultural heritage rooted in its landscape,” remarked Amber Harrison, International Dark Sky Places Program Manager.

This planning requirement has led to Gower businesses being able to offer dark sky tourism, and if your garden or the garden of your holiday let is there, this will benefit you. 

The way of beauty and art

Junichiō Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows is a gift of a book, written in 1933 and translate into English in 1977. One for any garden owner’s birthday list. 

Next for your “to read” pile.

The light and darkness hinted at in this assembly of notions is dappled, muted and artisanal. 

The light, or the lack of light, suggested in these beautiful pages (the Vintage edition with art selected by Suzanne Dean is especially luxe) is influenced by Tanizaki’s abiding love of his Japanese culture and its respect for lustre, muted luminescence and aesthetics.

“If light is scarce then light is scarce; we will immerse ourselves in the darkness and there discover its own particular beauty,” he writes, gently reminding us that we do not have to illuminate everything to enjoy it. 

The beauty we find when we mark out a material, perhaps a fine stone, or bark texture with a low wash of light is echoed here. 
“Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty,” he writes. Shadows are a gift in this world, because they tell us there is beauty beyond the waking day, when we are not even awake to see it. 

Here is the science and the human

Jacqueline Yallop’s Into the Dark: What darkness is and why it matters, broadly and deeply covers darkness as found in all manner of literature, eras, illnesses, sciences and philosophies. 

A rich look into darkness and light in everything from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Turner’s sunsets and the very real sunset of a life in that of her father’s decline to dementia.

This book discusses how we are never truly in darkness. Photons are everywhere, that much is true. I would rather not lecture a client on this, but instead guide them to thinking about the phases of the day and our perception of lights that enriches us. 

Yallop references and quotes so widely, yet it’s her own words I want to refer to here, because this small notion is worth reminding ourselves of.

“Dusk is important,” she writes. “It acts as a physical and emotional marker and tempers the day, allowing for the evolution of complete darkness. But it’s a tender thing, fragile and flowing.”

“Light pollution creates a false dark, too hard and unreal, too monotonous to be dusk, a bogus blur of illumination rather than a gathering of the dark.”

Allow yourself to experience the full human feeling of the entire day’s length by making space for these delicate shifts of light, dark sky planning guidance as in Gower and the Hudson dark sky selection, with my expert support.